2008 Woodie Awards
Debate was not best of all time
Student Government Elections
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Tuesday night's executive board debate might have been one of the number one best debates of all time.
Just kidding. Well, maybe if you asked Chris Wipke.
Members of the audience, on the other hand, were bored out of their skulls by recycled softball questions and a repeat performance of last week's debate. The only exception was a fiery indroductory address by Andrew Chappelle, in which he used every trick in the book to try deconstruct Senator Cari Johns' qualifications for the presidency-unfortunately, it made him look like a bitter man with nothing to lose, betting the farm to regain one tiny scrap of his dignity.
Our question is this: If national presidential debates are kept to 90 minutes, why did the organizers of Tuesday night's debate feel that Saint Louis University students would stay tuned in to a 150-minute marathon re-hash of last week's tedium? After all, the length of the presidential leg of the debate not only forced Election Commissioner Mike Herman to cut down the length of the other candidates' time at the podium at the expense of the portions that featured questions from the audience, but also lasted longer than all of the other positions' debates combined.
The same formatting flaws that were painfully evident last week were still a factor at this week's debate. While the presidential candidates did take the opportunity to ask follow-up questions of their competitors, the questions they asked rarely had anything to do with the questions that preceded them. At one point in the debate, Johns followed up a question posed to Chappelle about parking with a question about his character, which, although unrelated, brought out a more salient issue than most of the questions asked by the panel.
As for the panel, it seems that its members-save for current SGA President Adam Meister-spent the Tuesday before last watching "Friends" re-runs rather than tuning in to the debate; perhaps that explains their need to ask Johns, for example, the same question she was asked last week about what she would do if she was in a situation where she would have to make a decision that was unpopular with students but ultimately in their best interest. As for Filipino Student Association President Jen Prudencio, we wonder why the election commission did not choose someone that represented a larger campus group, as opposed to one small faction.
Adam Meister, on the other hand, can be credited for posing one of the most expository questions of the night to Chris Wipke, asking what aspect of student government Wipke felt Meister could have handled better over the past year-in essence, a loosely veiled inquiry as to whether Wipke had any clue about what had gone on in the past year in SGA. Wipke's response-that he could offer no critique-spoke volumes about his lack of knowledge of the organization.
All in all, the second debate was a resounding disappointment. The panel's questions were, for the most part, trite (as were the candidates' responses). The time constraits restricted the audience question-and-answer portions from serving students' interests and the replay of last week's presidential debate had even senatorial candidates yawning and looking at their watches before any of the other executive board candidates had a chance to approach the podium.
In order to ensure that next election season's debates don't follow the same pattern, next year's electoral commission would do well to reinstate the U. News Editor in Chief's position on the panel. Intently following the races each week, we understand the goings-on of SGA. And while we have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions in private, there are a few questions we'd like to ask them in public.
For example: answering the same tired questions two weeks in a row, how do you do it?